Real Time Electronic Patient Study Enrollment System in Emergency Room

A successful system to conduct clinical studies should enroll all eligible patients and
ensure complete data collection. We developed an online extension to our existing
tracking system to improve patient enrollment and data collection. In real-time, our
system alerts providers of ongoing studies, clearly conveys eligibility information,
efficiently enrolls patients, appends a data form to the patients record and ensures data
collection prior to discharge.
At any given time, there are multiple different clinical studies occurring in our emergency
department. It has been established in literature that collection of data for clinical studies
can be an expensive task. In order to maximize patient identification and ensure accurate
data collection, it is often necessary to utilize dedicated data collectors. Prior studies
suggest that relying on providers to enroll patients captures only 50% of eligible patients
and is plagued with data inaccuracy.
Our system takes advantage of our web based electronic tracking board to capture
patients eligible for a clinical study as well as flagging patients that may be missed. As a
component added onto our tracking system, our system asks physicians to determine a
patient’s eligibility for a clinical study as they sign up for the patient. The exclusion
criterion is displayed for each study and quickly allows the physician to determine
eligibility. Once a patient has been flagged as eligible, a data form is appended to their
electronic record and must be completed before the patient can be discharged from the
tracking system. Written in ASP, our application was designed such that clinical studies
could be easily added and removed from the system with minimum programming. In
order to ensure that the maximum number of patients are enrolled, our system also
searches for key words in the patient’s records to flag eligible patients that were initially
missed, at the time of discharge. Additionally, with the ability to extract information from
the patients tracking system, our system pre-populates relevant data into the clinical study
survey, decreasing the time a physician must spend inputting data. During the period for
which our system has been running, we have seen an enrollment rate of 80%. Although
we have yet to determine the superior efficiency and economic benefit of our system, our
implementation provides another method for health care providers and researchers to
gather clinical study information.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1560625/
 Review of Related Literature

Introduction
The literature is rich with recent information related to understanding the
factors that attract students to enroll in colleges and choose careers. At
the time when certain demographic data forecasted "doom and gloom" for
colleges in America, educators seldom thought they would be marketing
their product to shoppers. Paulsen explains it very clearly:
In the early 1970's, colleges anticipated demographic changes, economic
changes, and public policy changes, which threatened to close their
doors. Facing budget cuts and decreased enrollment forced colleges
to market their products. Thus, the emergence of comprehensive
analysis of enrollment factors began. (Paulsen, 1990)
Michael Paulsen of George Washington University published a
comprehensive report, "College Choice: Understanding Student
Enrollment Behavior" in 1990. His important work will be a cornerstone for
the study of this descriptive research study. The purpose of his work was
to create a tool which educational administrators and policy makers could
use to manage enrollment recruitment. His work digs into the core of why
students choose one college over another. Extensive marketing research
has been collected in this report, which substantiates how the variables
interact in college decision-making. Johnathan Fife, Professor and Director
for ERIC Clearing House credits Paulsen for thoroughly reviewing the
major literature addressing enrollment factors and the processes
students' use in choosing a college.
The purpose of this research study is to determine what specific factors
attract students to enroll in the Health Unit Coordinator Program at
Western Wisconsin Technical College. The beginning of the related
literature review will include statistical evidence of the demographic
8
changes in the 1970's, which started colleges thinking. Next the review
will move into clarifying the benefit of understanding student enrollment
behavior. A discussion of the conceptual framework will help to organize
variables found in the literature search. Then the chapter will conclude
with a brief summary of the major impact of related literature.
Colleges began analyzing student populations in mid-1970 because of
some of the following demographic data. Between the late 1970's and
mid-1990's, the traditional 18-21 year old student group was expected to
shrink by 21-25 percent (Paulsen, 1990). The job market declined for
college graduates thus decreasing motivation to attend college. The ratio
of professional and managerial jobs fell from 1.9 to 1.6 (Paulsen, 1990).
Salaries decreased by 2.2 percent, while other blue-collar job salaries
increased by 5.5 percent. If motivation for enrolling in college was to get a
better job, the incentive was weak. Colleges needed to do something to
respond to the changes for the "college market shoppers".
Educational institutions began to do something out of the ordinary. They
analyzed untapped resources of women returning to college, part-time
students, minorities and foreign-born (Paulsen, 1990). Colleges also
adjusted their traditional liberal arts curriculum to occupational based
such as engineering, business, and health sciences (Paulsen, 1990). These
responses kept college doors open and most important established
enrollment management experts.
http://www.uwstout.edu/lib/thesis/2003/2003schneiderl.pdf

Robert H. Glover1

(1) Office of Planning and Institutional Research, The University of Hartford, USA

Received: 20 December 1985

Abstract Over the next two decades, effective enrollment management is going to be
critical to the future of tuition/enrollment-dependent colleges and universities, especially
in states where the number of high-school graduates is expected to decline by 30–40%
(WICHE, 1984). This paper outlines the conceptual framework, design, and
implementation plan for building a decision-support system (DSS) for enrollment
management at the college level in a private, comprehensive university. It begins with a
brief overview of the DSS as a concept, the computer-hardware environment, and the
fourth-generation software tools used to implement the system (Briggs, 1982; Goetz,
1982; Moore and Greenwood, 1984). Research designs and application-development
strategies are reviewed to illustrate the potential of the DSS approach to enrollment
management.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/j3028355464nv985/